By CHRISTINE REILLY
STAFF WRITER
Eighteen-year-old Maria DiPietro from Glassboro is making her mark on the Rutgers community with her recent contributions to 88.9 WRSU, including her reporting on the 2012 election at the Democratic National Headquarters.
Although DiPietro is only a freshman at Rutgers, she said, her work at WRSU has allowed her to interview Sen. Bob Menendez, as well as report at least one story per day.
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When she reported the 2012 election results, she reported the story with one other person, calling into WRSU regularly to report the status of the election.
“It was fun...calling in and giving updates was a new experience for me. Everyone was very excited at the Democratic Headquarters,” DiPietro said. |
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She said her favorite part of the night was the uproar that occurred when Obama won the election at Democratic Headquarters, compared to the absolute stunned silence at the Republican National Headquarters.
“We were all dancing and singing and having fun. There was a real energy in the room after the results came in,” she said.
DiPietro said that her love for news began in her sophomore PR class, where she learned to write stories and press releases.
Eventually, DiPietro joined her school’s television news station, where she became an anchor and actually produced commercials that aired on local television stations, she said.
When she came to Rutgers, DiPietro focused on joining the radio station, and is now in charge of writing funny human interest stories for the morning news program. DiPietro says her favorite story was about a man in Great Britain who was kicked out of a dart competition for looking like Jesus Christ.
“Apparently, in Great Britain they have an annual dart competition, and believe it or not this guy was kicked out just because he looked so much like Jesus,” she said.
DiPietro does mention that being in charge of the funny news stories isn’t always easy. “Honestly, I Google funny news stories. NBC usually has good ones. But it is hard to find news like that, since funny stories don’t happen every day,” she said.
As for the future, DiPietro wants to work for network television, like being an anchor for a news station like Fox 5. Though she does enjoy reporting human interest stories, DiPietro wants to handle the more widely attention-getting news stories you see on headlines, though she prefers to work on television rather than radio.
Currently DiPietro is on the air twice a week, on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, but for her career, she said, she would be willing to wake up earlier, “I’m not a morning person, but I could be,” she said.
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